ACADEME TODAY: The Chronicle of Higher Education's Daily Report for subscribers _________________________________________________________________ MAGAZINES & JOURNALS A glance at the spring issue of "Dissent": Race and the Internet Will the Internet change our perceptions of race? Jerry Kang, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles, says that depends on how we construct our online environments. Mr. Kang writes that, at this stage, most Internet communication takes place through text, in which participants' races may remain invisible. "This prompts giddy speculations about Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream Version 2.0 -- to be judged by the content of one's text-characters, not the color of one's skin," says Mr. Kang. But ultimately he sees only limited use for Internet environments in which all mention of an author's race is excluded. While acknowledging that "zoning most marketplaces for 'abolition'" could be useful, he suggests that the Internet's real promise may not be in eliminating racial perceptions, but in changing and enriching them. "Virtual communities are centered around common interests, experiences, and fates," he writes. A focus on common goals may allow people to relate to those of other races in ways that change their perceptions of race. This is especially likely, he says, if information about people's race is not revealed until they have already established a relationship. Constructing a positive environment for racial interaction on the Internet will become even more challenging as online environments come to rely heavily on graphics as well as text. Mr. Kang hopes that those who build these new online environments will consider their potential to improve or harm race relations. "If we are coding a new 'cyburban' reality," he writes, "let us at least make new mistakes." The article is not online. Information about the journal is available at http://www.dissentmagazine.org/